For years, I ignored physical pain and warped my desires into discipline. I controlled my body with the sheer strength of my mind. Maybe now it’s time to turn all that around—to let my mind dictate the way my body moves. On my next exhale, I transition into downward dog—my calves feel warm and loose this time around, even as a tear rolls down my cheek and mixes with my sweat. I kneel for a moment to wipe my tears with the hem of my tank top and drink in the cool water that’s been waiting for me all practice. I do a sun salutation to catch up to the rest of the group. The simple way my breath and my movements sync up makes me feel airy, light, strong, and yes, powerful.

I make it through the next twenty minutes without taking a break, but I wouldn’t mind if I needed to. It’s strange—I didn’t realize I’d come so far. I mimic Sara’s movements as she leads the class from a one-legged balance to core-strengthening exercises to half-pigeon pose, which stretches out your hip flexors like taffy. In the final few minutes of the class, she asks us to lie down on our backs with our eyes closed in shavasana. She walks softly around the room with a bottle of lavender essential oil, dropping a dot of it on each of our shoulders.

“I’m going to close out the class with a few words of wisdom from the poet and activist Audre Lorde, and the song of the Tibetan singing bowl,” Sara says softly. The little noises around the studio—coughs, sighs, slurps from water bottles—grow still in anticipation. “ ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.’ ”

Then the melodic sound of the Tibetan singing bowl resonates and spirals throughout the room, growing and growing until Sara strikes the bowl and it clangs to a stop.

“You can stay in shavasana until you’re ready to rise again,” she says simply.

I let myself sink into the mat. Energy swirls through my body, but my limbs feel heavy with relaxation. I hadn’t wanted to give into Sara’s woo-woo, spiritual sort of stretching, but even I have to admit that it felt kind of, well, nice. The combination of exertion and mindfulness makes me drift off into thoughts about the ways in which gymnastics shaped my relationship to my body: my body image, my insistence of pushing through pain, the distant way I regarded my physical self first and foremost as a tool. Over the years, I’ve tried not to think about it too much. But here, it’s impossible to avoid.

Suddenly, Sara is squatting next to me. “How’d you like the class?” she asks.